


the tattooists

by mercuryhatter



Series: Colorless [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-01
Updated: 2013-04-01
Packaged: 2017-12-07 05:08:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/744610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuryhatter/pseuds/mercuryhatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>when colors start to be taken out of the world, the artists are the first to feel it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the tattooists

**Author's Note:**

> This sprung from a three-sentence fic prompt (http://thedearest-themostvaliant.tumblr.com/post/46560711118/prouvaire-and-bahorel-dystopian-au) and then I made the mistake of listening to the song Raleigh and Spencer while thinking about this and now it's an entire universe planned out from beginning to end. Oops.
> 
> (For your convenience, a pronoun guide: Enjolras: he; Combeferre: she; Courfeyrac: xe; Joly: he; Bossuet: he; Musichetta: she; Feuilly: he; Grantaire: she; Jehan: ze; Bahorel: he.)
> 
> And a note on structure: the perspectives are going to be divided according to groupings of characters. This first installment to the series focuses on Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta. The next one will be Jehan and Bahorel (the vandals), then Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre (the agitators), Feuilly (the artist), and Grantaire (the resigned), with a final installment that brings them all together.

None of them expected everything to happen so fast and yet still so subtly.

One day Musichetta was doing the last session on Jehan’s watercolor tattoos, an explosion of flowers that covered both shoulder blades and went all the way down to zir soft brown wrists. Joly was meticulously sterilizing his tools in the back, and Bossuet was at the register, talking jovially to Combeferre as she fiddled with the computer (it was broken again; Bossuet and a cup of coffee had come within ten feet of it and the result was inevitable). Enjolras was lounging in the sun on one of the wide windowsills, stretched out like a cat with his shirt open over his bare breasts and a book propped on his stomach, while Courfeyrac sat next to him, one hand tangled in Enjolras’ hair and the other holding a cell phone to xer ear. Bahorel had been exiled to go get them all coffee by Musichetta-- he couldn’t sit by Jehan while Musichetta tattooed zir without jumping every time the needle gun buzzed, because while Bahorel was a force of nature with his fists he was in fact terrified of needles.

Nothing abruptly shatters this last image of normalcy in Joly’s head. There are no explosions or broken windows or wailing sirens to signify how different everything is going to be by the next day. Musichetta finishes Jehan’s tattoos, Bahorel returns with the coffees and Feuilly in tow, whose shift has just ended, they all help close and clean the shop and then drift off in separate directions. Bahorel and Jehan go to their apartment, Grantaire shows up shyly to take Enjolras out to dinner (it had been their first real date, Joly remembers, they’d been skirting the issue for weeks but this was their first real date), Feuilly ends up going with Courfeyrac and Combeferre to the library (Courfeyrac complains loudly but xe is smiling, slinging xer arm around Feuilly and tugging on Combeferre’s sleeve). Bossuet gets the computer successfully rebooted and then shut down for the night; Musichetta pulls Joly away from his sterilizing station and gives him a sloppy kiss while Joly smiles into her lips and traces her tattoo sleeves-- a blue sky with scattered clouds on the right, an underwater scene on the left-- with his fingers. Bossuet comes up behind the both of them and they go upstairs to bed in a tangle of limbs and kisses and not a few tumbles straight down to the floor.

When Joly wakes up, there are only two in their bed.

He doesn’t immediately panic. He stretches lazily and curls himself into Bossuet, who is still asleep, but tightens his arm around Joly’s waist out of reflex. He expects Musichetta to come out of the bathroom at any minute, or the smell of coffee and breakfast to start emanating from the kitchen. When neither of these things happen and there’s still no sign of Musichetta, he assumes she’s gone downstairs to work on drafts for her commissions. He finally rolls out of bed after fifteen minutes indulging in the warmth from Bossuet’s bare chest, pressing a kiss to the man’s sternum and shuffling into the bathroom.

When he leaves the bathroom, half-dressed but clean and much more awake, that’s when he notices.

If Joly had been someone else, he might not have seen it immediately, but Joly was Joly, and he kept the apartment as clean as his piercing station. The carpet is going the wrong way at the bedroom door, making it a shade darker than the rest of the floor. In the hallway outside, there is a chip on the wall that hadn’t been there before, and a side table is shifted to the right.

Joly frowns. He pushes down the panic that rises in his stomach and turns to wake Bossuet.

Bossuet is awake already, sitting up in bed with his phone pressed to his ear. Joly pauses in the doorway.

“Slow down, Bahorel, you’re talking faster than Courf does, I can’t understand-- what do you mean, ze’s gone? Jehan always takes walks in the morning-- okay, okay, have you tried-- okay, yes, just hang on. Look, come over here and we’ll figure this out okay? Okay. Bye.”

Joly raises his eyebrows questioningly at Bossuet, who sighs and rubs his forehead.

“I don’t know. That was Bahorel. He says Jehan is gone and zir phone is still on the nightstand. For some reason he doesn’t think it’s zir usual walk. What?” Bossuet asks; Joly has gone pale and sagging against the doorframe.

“I haven’t checked downstairs yet and I know I panic about little things but, Bossuet, I don’t know where Musichetta is, and I swear something doesn’t feel right, I know something’s wrong.” Joly says this all in one breath and gives a little gasp when he finishes, tapping his fingers in a quick staccato rhythm against his thigh. But Bossuet is smiling, climbing out of bed and taking Joly’s wrists gently in his hands.

“Calm your wings, Jolllly, they’re going to flutter right off you,” he says kindly. “This resolves everything, see? They must be together; they probably went out for breakfast. Come on, let’s call Chetta.” Joly nods while Bossuet gets his phone back out and dials. Joly can hear the pause while the phone connects, the service always takes a moment of static to kick in, and then--

And then, Musichetta’s ringtone from the bedside table where she’d left it last night.

Joly panics.

 

\---

 

It doesn’t get better. For ten days, it doesn’t get better, ten days that are a whirlwind of missing persons reports and being stonewalled by the police (maybe they eloped, maybe they don’t want to be found, they’re adults people leave all the time maybe they just don’t care get out of my face we have real work to do), Enjolras almost gets himself arrested shouting back at them, demanding that something be done, but Feuilly and Combeferre stay him with hands and quiet words. They are all tense, with Enjolras and Bahorel on especially short fuses, and Grantaire ends up punched in the face by the latter for some drunken, pessimistic comment of hers. Courfeyrac is constantly playing peacemaker: between Enjolras and Grantaire, between Bahorel and the world, between Joly and panic, and xer exhaustion is evident. They are fractured, all of them, and they all think if there was just news, if they just knew something, at least this awful weight might leave them.

 By the third day they have all essentially moved in at Courfeyrac’s. Xe lives with Enjolras and Combeferre in one of the big, beautiful Garden District houses, passed down to xer by the aunt xe’d grown up with before said aunt moved to Russia in a fit of whimsy (she’d settled down to raise Courfeyrac but running off to foreign countries had been pretty par for the course for her beforehand). It’s massive and gorgeous, two stories and far more rooms than anyone ever needs, but they all congregate in the downstairs parlor, sleeping in piles of couch cushions and mattresses dragged in from other rooms. Bahorel doesn’t want to be in the apartment that’s so much Jehan’s; Joly and Bossuet feel the same. Combeferre is quiet and withdrawn; she doesn’t talk to anyone unless she has to, not even when Bahorel screams at her that if she’s so calm then clearly she doesn’t care about their missing sweetheart, or Musichetta either.

(She does speak when Bahorel comes to her later with a gruff apology. She tells him in a calm, measured tone that she knows he didn’t mean it, that they’re all scared, and then she returns to her book. Her eyes don’t move across the page with the words. Gold letters on the spine spell out Keats in curly script.)

Early in the morning of the eleventh day, before the sun, there’s a knock on Courfeyrac’s door. Combeferre is the only one still awake; she carefully extricates herself from beneath Courfeyrac and stumbles blearily to the door to answer it. She almost thinks she’s dreaming when she opens it to Musichetta and Jehan in their pajamas, Musichetta’s arm protectively around Jehan and bewildered looks on both their faces.

But then Jehan is reaching out for her and she’s grabbing zir fiercely and dragging them both into the house and screaming for the others; the resulting pile of hugs and kisses and grasping hands is so overwhelming that Combeferre almost doesn’t notice that both Jehan’s and Musichetta’s arms are bare and undecorated, Musichetta’s paler skin bright pink and flaking, Jehan’s looking dry and raw. No one else has noticed yet, too relieved at the reunion, but Combeferre grasps Enjolras’ wrist and nods toward what she’s seen.

Enjolras’ face goes blank, then he nods slowly. A look passes between them.

They are the first two to know that it’s begun.

 


End file.
